The Small House at Allington, Anthony Trollope [best ebook reader for chromebook .txt] 📗

Lady De Courcy. Many, when they heard that Mr. Palliser was to be at the castle, had expressed their surprise at her success in that quarter. Others, when they learned that Lady Dumbello had consented to become her guest, had also wondered greatly. But when it was ascertained that the two were to be there together, her good-natured friends had acknowledged that she was a very clever woman. To have either Mr. Palliser or Lady Dumbello would have been a feather in her cap; but to succeed in getting both, by enabling each to know that the other would be there, was indeed a triumph. As regards Lady Dumbello, however, the bargain was not fairly carried out; for, after all, Mr. Palliser came to Courcy Castle only for two nights and a day, and during the whole of that day he was closeted with sundry large blue-books. As for Lady De Courcy, she did not care how he might be employed. Blue-books and Lady Dumbello were all the same to her. Mr. Palliser had been at Courcy Castle, and neither enemy nor friend could deny the fact.

This was his second evening; and as he had promised to meet his constituents at Silverbridge at one p.m. on the following day, with the view of explaining to them his own conduct and the political position of the world in general; and as he was not to return from Silverbridge to Courcy, Lady Dumbello, if she made any way at all, must take advantage of the short gleam of sunshine which the present hour afforded her. No one, however, could say that she showed any active disposition to monopolize Mr. Palliser’s attention. When he sauntered into the drawing-room she was sitting, alone, in a large, low chair, made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but hollowed and round at the back, so as to afford her the support that was necessary to her. She had barely spoken three words since she had left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her. Lady Julia had again attacked the countess about Lily Dale and Mr. Crosbie, and Alexandrina, driven almost to rage, had stalked off to the farther end of the room, not concealing her special concern in the matter.

“How I do wish they were married and done with,” said the countess; “and then we should hear no more about them.”

All of which Lady Dumbello heard and understood; and in all of it she took a certain interest. She remembered such things, learning thereby who was who, and regulating her own conduct by what she learned. She was by no means idle at this or at other such times, going through, we may say, a considerable amount of really hard work in her manner of working. There she had sat speechless, unless when acknowledging by a low word of assent some expression of flattery from those around her. Then the door opened, and when Mr. Palliser entered she raised her head, and the faintest possible gleam of satisfaction might have been discerned upon her features. But she made no attempt to speak to him; and when, as he stood at the table, he took up a book and remained thus standing for a quarter of an hour, she neither showed nor felt any impatience. After that Lord Dumbello came in, and he stood at the table without a book. Even then Lady Dumbello felt no impatience.

Plantagenet Palliser skimmed through his little book, and probably learned something. When he put it down he sipped a cup of tea, and remarked to Lady De Courcy that he believed it was only twelve miles to Silverbridge.

“I wish it was a hundred and twelve,” said the countess.

“In that case I should be forced to start tonight,” said Mr. Palliser.

“Then I wish it was a thousand and twelve,” said Lady De Courcy.

“In that case I should not have come at all,” said Mr. Palliser. He did not mean to be uncivil, and had only stated a fact.

“The young men are becoming absolute bears,” said the countess to her daughter Margaretta.

He had been in the room nearly an hour when he did at last find himself standing close to Lady Dumbello: close to her, and without any other very near neighbour.

“I should hardly have expected to find you here,” he said.

“Nor I you,” she answered.

“Though, for the matter of that, we are both near our own homes.”

“I am not near mine.”

“I meant Plumstead; your father’s place.”

“Yes; that was my home once.”

“I wish I could show you my uncle’s place. The castle is very fine, and he has some good pictures.”

“So I have heard.”

“Do you stay here long?”

“Oh, no. I go to Cheshire the day after tomorrow. Lord Dumbello is always there when the hunting begins.”

“Ah, yes; of course. What a happy fellow he is; never any work to do! His constituents never trouble him, I suppose?”

“I don’t think they ever do, much.”

After that Mr. Palliser sauntered away again, and Lady Dumbello passed the rest of the evening in silence. It is to be hoped that they both were rewarded by that ten minutes of sympathetic intercourse for the inconvenience which they had suffered in coming to Courcy Castle.

But that which seems so innocent to us had been looked on in a different light by the stern moralists of that house.

“By Jove!” said the Honourable George to his cousin, Mr. Gresham, “I wonder how Dumbello likes it.”

“It seems to me that Dumbello takes it very easily.”

“There are some men who will take anything easily,” said George, who, since his own marriage, had learned to have a holy horror of such wicked things.

“She’s beginning to come out a little,” said Lady Clandidlem to Lady De Courcy, when the two old women found themselves together over a fire in some back sitting-room. “Still waters always run deep, you know.”

“I shouldn’t at all wonder if she were to go off with him,” said Lady De Courcy.

“He’ll never be such a fool as that,” said Lady Clandidlem.

“I believe men